A former trainee doctor is facing jail time for secretly recording 876 people using toilets at Melbourne hospitals, after pleading guilty to compiling a cache of illegally obtained intimate videos over four years.
Ryan Cho, 29, told Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday that he had hidden cameras in toilets and showers to spy on staff, mostly women, in hospitals including the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
Cho also set up cameras in share houses where he lived between 2020 and last year, when maintenance staff at the Austin Hospital sounded the alarm and sparked a major police investigation and raids on his home.
Dozens of victims watched the court proceedings via video link on Thursday. Cho sat alone and unmoving in the front row of the court as his charges, relating to the creation of thousands of intimate images and videos, were read out.
Magistrate Michelle Mykytowycz said that between April 2 and July 7, 2025, Cho obtained 2185 intimate images of 541 victims at the Austin Hospital in Heidelberg using a secret camera placed in staff toilets in five different locations.
Secret cameras were also installed in toilets at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, she said, which captured 277 victims in 720 images between October 12, 2024, and January 7, 2025.
At the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, secret cameras filmed 50 victims in 81 images between October 10 and October 31, 2025.
Cho also recorded 104 intimate videos and captured 3424 photographs of a single victim, constituting a stalking offence, between October 22, 2020, and September 25, 2021.
“I understand it, you’re pleading guilty to all charges,” Mykytowycz said.
Earlier the court heard Cho had been working at the hospitals as a trainee doctor before a nurse and later maintenance workers found a strategically placed mobile phone recording inside a mesh bag in a toilet at the Austin in July 2025.
Police later revealed that toilets had been deliberately blocked to usher people into a single cubicle where the phone was hidden.
Detectives seized more than 10,000 intimate files, including 4500 videos, from a device at Cho’s home, where his victims were categorised into folders by their names and workplaces.
After being charged he was bailed by the Supreme Court to live with his parents, who said they had flown to Australia from Singapore to take care of their son.
Cho was originally charged with 910 offences and on Thursday pleaded guilty to 13 rolled-up charges in which dates were combined into time frames.
He is no longer working as a doctor, after the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency barred him from practising medicine.
The magistrate extended Cho’s bail with conditions that he provide a $50,000 surety, report to police three times a week, not attend hospitals, not leave the state and surrender his passport.
He is also prohibited from carrying any recording devices outside his bail address.
Cho is expected to face a three-day pre-sentence hearing at the County Court from November 23.
If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), Lifeline 131 114, or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.
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